Queenstown to Wanaka over the Crown Range Road - Driving the whole road | 4K

Categories: Otago Region

Tags: crown range road, driving, new zealand, queenstown, sh6, wanaka

Added: 2 years ago

Starting on Shotover street in Queenstown and driving SH6 all the way to Wanaka over the Crown Range Road, passing through Cadrona on the way, and arriving in Wanaka at just after sunset.

Queenstown is a famous holiday resort town at any time of the year. The town is renowned for its four distinct seasons. Winter brings cold, blue-sky days; then spring keeps the snow with longer, warmer days. Finally, summer offers sunshine with long twilights, and autumn is a brilliant red and gold surge.

The spectacle of the Central Otago landscape unfolds before you as you drive out of Queenstown. You'll recognize many Middle-earth locations here if you're a Lord of the Rings fan. Nearby in Arrowtown, explore gold mining history, visit the Lakes District Museum, or go gold panning. At the northern tip of Lake Wakatipu are rural Glenorchy and Paradise Valley. Also, from here, it's a short drive into Mt Aspiring National Park, where some of New Zealand's great walks start.

Queenstown offers skiing from winter through spring. Other activities include sky diving, bungy jumping, canyon swinging, horse trekking, jet boating, and river rafting all year round. Queenstown is also a renowned cycling destination. The town provides easy scenic tracks, backcountry trails, road rides, heli-biking, and the Southern Hemisphere's only gondola-accessed downhill mountain biking.

If adventure isn't your thing, plenty of mellow options exist. Experience one of the many walking or hiking trails and sightseeing tours, or treat yourself to a spa treatment, boutique shopping, and excellent food and wine.

Wanaka is a scenic holiday resort town on the shores of Lake Wanaka, in the Southern Lakes District, in Central Otago, New Zealand. The township sits in a glacier-carved basin next to the lake. Wanaka is the gateway to Mt Aspiring National Park and the ski fields of Treble Cone and Cardrona Alpine Resort. Lake Hawea is a 15-minute drive away, heading to the town of Makarora, the last stop when heading to the Glacier areas on the West Coast. South of the town is the historic Cardrona Valley, offering an alpine road to neighbouring Queenstown.

There's a diverse range of attractions and endless activities nearby. Wanaka is close to some of New Zealand's finest ski fields, 4WDing, mountain biking, wineries, jetboating, heli-skiing, and trout and salmon fishing. There are also Lord of the Rings tours, horse trekking, sky-diving, paintballing, and scenic flights. Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World is a must-do - an entertaining world of baffling and unique puzzles, 3D mazes and puzzling eccentricity — an ideal activity for families.

Lake Wanaka sits at an altitude of 300 metres and covers an area of 192 square kilometres. It is New Zealand's fourth-largest lake, estimated to be over 300 m deep.

Wanaka's name in Maori is a corruption of Oanaka, meaning - The place of Anaka, a local tribal chief.